Midnight Murder Club is set in a noir atmosphere within a spooky mansion called Wormwood Manor, arming players with only a flashlight. The game features proximity chat, detailed positional audio, and adaptive triggers for DualSense, enhancing the overall immersion and gameplay experience. Players can choose from various modes, each offering a different twist on the classic shooter gameplay.
The game recently went through both an open and a crossplay beta in the last quarter of 2024, giving players a sneak peek of what’s in store, but the developers have even more surprises up their sleeves. With the Early Access launching on March 13, they’re introducing the exciting new Wildcards mode. In a Game Rant interview, Midnight Murder Club game director Eric Feurstein detailed Velan Studios’ visions and hope for the game, while also discussing what players can expect out of Early Access. This interview has been edited for brevity and clarity.
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Midnight Murder Club – Crossplay Beta Trailer
Midnight Murder Club has announced its Crossplay Beta coming soon!
New Wildcards Mode and Guest Pass Edition Introduced to Midnight Murder Club
Q: What does Wildcards add to the gameplay loop that the other game modes do not?
Feurstein: I think our other game modes, Free-for-all, Team Deathmatch, Thief in the Night, and Headhunters, are a bit more intense; some require careful teamwork and strategy. What Wildcards does is add more humor and chaos to the game.
At the start of a Wildcards match, six cards are played that change the rules of the game in fun and weird ways. There are always one or two cards you completely forget are active until they blow up in your face. For instance, I ALWAYS forget when the Fire Trap card is played. Fire Trap makes anyone killed explode into a fireball. This isn’t usually a problem if you’re shooting at someone from a distance, but I always end up running to someone to stab them only for them to explode, lighting me on fire! So there our two bodies lay, engulfed in flames, laughing at each other as we fade out.
When the match is over, there’s so much to talk about because so many surprising or funny moments happen. Then, everyone earns a bunch of new cards with weird rule changes on them, and before you know it, you’re back in the mansion!
Q: How many cards will be available in Wildcards collections, and what inspired this new gameplay system?
Feurstein: We’ll have 24 cards at the launch of Early Access. If people like the mode and want more, we have a ton of new card designs we’d love to update the mode with!
What inspired this game mode was all the conversations we had with each other and the playtesters and beta testers! When we played during the open betas, it was amazing to hear people discuss some new rule they wanted to try, and everyone just agreed to it! An entire lobby of strangers agreeing to a knives-only round or a spontaneous game of Marco Polo in the dark! Wildcards mode was our answer to people wanting to experiment with the game and make it weirder!
Q: Can you walk us through the differences between a standard, purchased copy of the game and the Guest Pass edition? Is it cross-play between PS5 and Steam as well?
Feurstein: There isn’t that much difference between the two! The Guest Pass edition of the game can play every game mode, public or private, they can play with bots, they can even keep their Wildcards collection! The only thing a Guest needs is someone who has purchased the game to invite them to their lobby. If one person purchases the game, 5 of their friends can play with them as much as they want, no extra cost!
And yes, this is all with full cross-play support! A Steam Guest Pass Edition player can join the lobby of a paying PS5 player, or vice versa.
Midnight Murder Club Blends Horror and Multiplayer Mayhem in a Unique Setting
Q: Midnight Murder Club seems to have a noir aesthetic that’s quite different from your previous games which are brighter or more futuristic in design. What motivated this stylistic shift?
Feurstein: I was actually quite nervous to pitch the game for that very reason! I was pitching a first-person shooter horror game with a realistic art style, with the word “Murder” in the title. Pretty different from the games we’ve made so far!
Luckily, it didn’t seem to be a problem and people saw promise in the idea, but yeah, it was a little nerve-wracking. As for the aesthetic, it just made sense for a game about creeping around in the dark with a flashlight to lean into the noir/haunted house vibes and set it in an old Victorian mansion. Old noir movies were all about the dramatic and stark lighting, and so was our game!
Q: There have been many sensational horror games over the past few years like Phasmophobia or Lethal Company. How do you see Midnight Murder Club fitting into the modern horror/multiplayer landscape?
Feurstein: First off, those are two absolutely phenomenal games and I’d be honored if people had as much fun playing Midnight Murder Club as I’ve had playing those games.
When I think about people playing Midnight Murder Club, I think about how I play games with my friends. We might play a couple courses of Golf with Your Friends, then jump into a Jackbox game and maybe finish the night out with a quick game of Worms or Trouble in Terrorist Town. I see Midnight Murder Club fitting into that rotation—play a few rounds, have a bunch of laughs, meet up again next weekend and do it all again!
Q: Can you talk about the design of Wormwood Manor and how it facilitates its gameplay regardless of the game mode?
Feurstein: When your game takes place in pitch darkness and light is a rare occurrence, we need to capitalize on that light as much as possible.
When designing the mansion, we tried to make sure at least two things happened when you turned your flashlight on; you gained information, and you saw something interesting. The information you’d gain would be things like which room you’re in, which direction you’re facing, where the doors are, how many bullets are in your gun, etc. Seeing something interesting meant having highly thematic rooms, asymmetrical room layouts, and strange art on the walls, etc.
We also needed your beam of light to reach other players, so light leaking was also really important. One of the first things we did when building the mansion was to make all the doors have a little gap underneath them, so light would leak between rooms. Hiding in the shadows while someone else’s flashlight gets close and close to a door is immensely fun and stressful.
We carefully designed the mansion so you never quite know if someone can see your flashlight, so no matter how careful you are, sooner or later your flashlight beam is going to leak into another room and an assassin will surprise you in the shadows. How Challenges and Player Feedback Helped Shape the Features in Midnight Murder Club
Q: What were some of the biggest challenges you encountered during the development of Midnight Murder Club, and how did you overcome them?
Feurstein: One of the biggest challenges was not completely giving in to fear! We were trying to do something different with Midnight Murder Club, and it’s always scary to try something new. Not only were we working on unique game mechanics, but we were trying to do it with a small and scrappy team on a custom engine! You have to work fast and make fast decisions in an environment like that, and you can’t let fear get in the way.
One of the major fears we had to work through was: “Is the game too dark?” The entire unique hook of the game was to introduce light and dark as a main mechanic and for that to work, the darkness had to be DARK. However, we received a lot of feedback from early internal and external testers that went counter to that pillar. We had countless conversations on topics like “Is the mansion too dark? Should there be SOME light? What about a mini-map?” All of those conversations came from fear, and it wasn’t irrational fear but a real fear: “What if people didn’t like the game?”
But in the end, we had to remind ourselves that we’re trying to do something unique and if we want to stand out, we need to stick to our guns. We need to come up with creative solutions to the feedback that doesn’t completely erode that main pillar of light and dark.
Q: Based on the feedback from the open beta or crossplay beta, what changes or improvements have you implemented in the launch version of the game?
Feurstein: Well, Wildcards is a big one! We hadn’t planned on creating a brand-new game mode a few months before launching in Early Access, but after playing with the community and reading through the feedback, this seemed like an addition that would really be appreciated by the players as well as show the game off in a fun way.
We also added the ability to play with bots as a direct response to feedback from the community. Midnight Murder Club can be an intimidating game to start playing, and people wanted a way to ease into it by practicing with bots. At the launch of Early Access, you’ll be able to play with bots in Free-for-All and Team Deathmatch with the hope of adding them to all game modes shortly after.
Q: For players who are new to the horror genre, what advice would you give them to fully enjoy Midnight Murder Club?
Feurstein: I would say, as someone with hundreds of hours in the game, that it’s okay to turn on your flashlight! While the game is meant to punish you for having your light on, it helps to remember that as soon as you turn your light off, you’re hidden! If an enemy saw your light, they’re going to have to come find you and for them to do that they’ll have to turn THEIR light on. Light is your friend just as much as it is your enemy.
Q: Can you talk about any current Early Access plans for Midnight Murder Club?
Feurstein: We have a roadmap covering the next six months or so that we’ll be sharing shortly, but that’s only including what we think we want to add to the game based on what we learned in the betas and our internal play sessions. Once the game launches in Early Access, there’ll be a whole new group of people playing that have their own feedback about what they like, what they don’t like, and what they’d like to see in the future from the game. So, we’re making sure to leave space on our roadmap for those ideas and conversations!
We’re excited to develop the game alongside the players, and we look forward to hearing your feedback! Stay tuned for more, because launch is only a couple of weeks away, and we’ll be sharing our initial roadmap before the game is live!
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